Blog Archives

The Den, base of operations for Lunacy’s werewolves. A little off topic I know but I didn’t want to let Hedjeroo’s lovely artwork lie unappreciated on my hard drive for months. It's intended to serve as a between game sessions menu, with buttons spray painted on the wall.

Sadly I must announce that I’m putting Lunacy on hold. It wasn’t the easiest decision but I’m confident I’m making the right choice.

There was only me and Hedjeroo left contributing to the project and yesterday I sat down and attempted to estimate just how much more time it would take to complete. I came to the conclusion that with Hedjeroo continuing to contribute 2d artwork whilst I continue to handle everything else it was going to take at least another eleven weeks. Which is really just too long for me to keep soldiering on given my current circumstances.

I imagine it’s a fairly common mistake for new devs to try something too ambitious with their first proper game. I could compensate at this point and try to “cut the fat off the game”. But honestly I don’t think I can do that without making it a radically different game. One that wouldn’t really do credit to the embarrassing amount of time poured into it.

Instead I’ve decided to take everything I’ve learnt from Lunacy and challenge myself to create a completely different, much simpler iOS game in just one month, (As part of onegameamonth!) It’ll be just me on this new project and I’ll be posting some information on the new game here either tomorrow or the day after.

I have every intention of returning to Lunacy at some point, but regardless I’d like to thank everyone who contributed, gave feedback or support for it. It’ll be back one day!

That’s right I’m still alive! (As is Mr Green line, dispute my best efforts.) Apologies for the prolonged radio silence, long story short, everyone else has had far more important things going on in their lives lately so I’ve been doing a bit of a one-man development team thing even more then usual over here.

But I’m back on the radio now, and as you’ve probably noticed, I’ve brought some progress back with me. You might also have noticed I replaced the site’s games page with a page all about lunacy with far more up to date information.

I’m doing a bit of reorganizing over here, when that’s done I should start blogging and tweeting more frequently again.

Ivorie’s character portrait, her werewolf form is based on a white wolf

Even more Optimised: As boring as it is to say, Lunacy has undergone yet more optimization! Everybody’s favorite element of games development.

Music: Andrews’ awesome music is in game, now if only I could figure out how to squeeze it into the next Dev Vid without me having to stop speaking for ages.

Searchable Buildings: Buildings can now be searched for supplies, there’s some definite survival game flavour sneaking into this action game.

Close Quarters Weaponry: Melee/Close Combat weapons are in and working! To be specific a particularly nasty looking baseball bat filled with nails.

Lighting Overhaul: Lunacy is now lit by a mix of vertex lighting, baked light maps and my sweat and tears. In layman’s terms, it’s prettier!

+1 to Scenery: Cars, ambulances, new lampposts, porch lights, new hedges and some suspiciously Cretaceous footprints have been added.

+1 to Ergonomics: On screen joysticks are larger, more sensitive and aligned with the camera in a more constructive manner.

Camera Upgrade: The camera is now angled in a more interesting way, and automatically adjusts itself should buildings block your view.

Smoother Zombies: Zombies now animate and turn more smoothly.

Moar Zombies: The zombies in the suburbs have diversified into Classics, Runners, Sprinters and Crunchy Ones and been color coded for your convenience. I imagine I’ll do a post about the differences between these guys sometime soon.

Only the werewolf transformation and survivor tracking mechanics need to be done now. Then all the core bits that make up a game session are complete and focus can move in the direction of menus, journals, leveling up etc.